John Winslow (1703-1774)
}} Biography Maj. Gen. John Winslow was a commander of provincial forces of the British Army. He led the Massachusetts Militia in the deportation of the Acadians and several other campaigns of the French-Indian Wars. Later he was a Massachusetts politician. Ancestry "John the son of Isaac Winslow and Sarah his Wife was borne May the 27 : 1703 being Wensday". He was born in Marshfield, Plymouth county, Province of Massachusetts Bay. John Winslow belonged to one of the most prominent families of New England; his great-grandfather Edward Winslow (1595-1655) and grandfather Josiah Winslow (1628-1680) had both been governors of the Plymouth Colony. He was born in Marshfield, Massachusetts in 1703 as son of Sarah and Isaac Winslow. During Father Rale's War, Winslows older brother Josiah was given the command of Fort St. George (Thomaston, Maine) and was killed by natives of the Wabanaki Confederacy in the Northeast Coast Campaign (1724). The following year, Winslow named his first born after his deceased brother. Winslow House Museum His birthplace, the 1699 Winslow House, still stands today at 64 Careswell St, Marshfield MA. It has been converted into a historic house museum providing a glimpse into the lives of New England landed gentry prior to the Revolutionary War. The Isaac Winslow House is the ancestral home of the founding family of Marshfield and was considered an avant-garde South Shore mansion. Built by Judge Isaac Winslow, the house is virtually untouched by modernization. It has been occupied by a family of governors, generals, doctors, lawyers and judges who helped to create Marshfield and the South Shore. It survives as an example of how well-to-do landed gentry, particularly Loyalists, lived in the years prior to the American Revolutionary War. Early Military Career After holding a few minor positions in Plymouth, he was commissioned captain of a provincial company in a failed British expedition to Cuba in 1740. Following this he transferred to the British Army and served as captain in the 40th Foot at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, and St John’s in Newfoundland. Acadian Campaign 1755 In 1754, he was promoted major-general of militia by Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts and put in command of a force of 800 men which was sent to the Kennebec River in Maine to consolidate British positions and prevent French encroachments. There he built two forts, Fort Halifax (Maine) and Fort Western. In 1755, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of a provincial regiment raised by Shirley to aid Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence of Nova Scotia in his attempts to sweep French Acadian influence from the province, and played an important role at the capture of Fort Beauséjour in June 1755. During the Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755), Winslow was then ordered to proceed to Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, to remove the Acadian population, as part of the infamous Great Upheaval. Although often believed solely responsible for carrying out the deportation, Winslow was in charge of only one segment of a much larger operation. On 5 September 1755 he informed the assembled Acadian men that they and their families were to be removed from the province. Winslow termed the business “Very Disagreable to my natural make & Temper,” in his “Journal of Colonel John Winslow of the provincial troops, while engaged in removing the Acadian inhabitants from Grand Pre”. The numerous delays in arranging transports caused the deportation to take far longer than had been anticipated, but by November he had shipped 1,510 Acadians to Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other British colonies to the south. Fort St Frederic Expedtion 1756 Winslow returned to Massachusetts in November 1755, but only a couple of months later he was appointed by Shirley (then temporary commander-in-chief), to command the provincial troops in an expedition against Fort St. Frédéric, New York. However, in March 1756 the new commander-in-chief, Lord Loudoun, arrived from Britain, and Winslow fought bitterly with him over his proposed integration of the provincial troops with the regulars. The provincial soldiers had enlisted to serve only under their own officers, and feared the hard discipline, with floggings and hangings, that was part of the regular army. And their officers feared that the integration could result in them losing their rank, as they held it only by colonial commission. The issue nearly developed into a mutiny of the provincial troops and a revolt of their officers, but Winslow eventually agreed to the integration under threats from Loudoun. Massachusetts Politics In 1757 Winslow returned to Massachusetts and civilian life. He represented Marshfield in the General Court from 1757 to 1758 and from 1761 to 1765. In 1762 he served as a member of the St Croix River boundary commission, and in about 1766 he moved to Hingham, Massachusetts, where he died in 1774. Marriage & Family In 1725, he married Mary Little, a descendant of Pilgrim Richard Warren (c1580-1628). They had three children: Josiah, Pelham and Isaac Winslow. * Josiah born 5 Sep 1730 in Plymouth - He died on 1 Mar 1730/31 in Plymouth * Pelham born 8 Jun 1737 in Marshfield * Isaac Winslow (1739-1819)- a Loyalist doctor who quarantined and inoculated many Marshfield and Duxbury residents afflicted with smallpox. Largely because of his actions, his property was not confiscated after the Revolution. Servants One of his slaves was Briton Hammon who published the Narrative of the Uncommon Suffering and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man in 1760. Britton Hammon, who after voyaging at sea, being captured by Indians off the coast of Florida, and his subsequent escape and reconciliation with former master John Winslow, wrote his life story, becoming among the first African-Americans to have published his work in the New World. Legacy The town of Winslow, Maine is named for General Winslow.4 References * [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0282343253/maintourvacationA/ Winslow Memorial, Vol. 1] : Family Records of Winslows and Their Descendants in America, With the English Ancestry as Far as Known; Winslow Family(Classic Reprint) - Tracing family roots of the descendants these early Plymouth Colony settlers back to England. * Winslow in Plymouth County, Massachusetts - first families history * John Winslow- disambiguation * - Wikipedia * Seven Years War - Wikipedia * Memorial #116844804 Texts * Winslow's Journal - Bay of Fundy Campaign (1755) * Winslow's Journal - Battle of Beausejour * Johnston, A.J.B.; Kerr, W.P. (2004). Grand-Pré, Heart of Acadie. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55109-479-3. Category:South Lancashire Regiment officers Category:40th Regiment of Foot officers Category:British Army generals Category:British military personnel of the French and Indian War Category:Acadian history Category:British America army officers